OpenBackup: One of the Most Promising Jailbreak Backup Solutions on Cydia

Today I tried out OpenBackup, a new package backup solution for your jailbreak apps and tweaks. Admittedly, I was a bit skeptical. I’ve had my fair share of experiences with backup tools for jailbreak apps tweaks in the past, and they either don’t work, or are overly complicated.

Outside of PKGBackup, I can’t really recommend any backup solutions, although I have yet to try iBye (I have heard good things about that).

But even an excellent app like PKGBackup can be borderline confusing when it comes to safely backing up and restoring your Cydia tweaks. With the advent of iCloud, I held out hope that a backup tool could harness its power for backups and restores, and that’s just what happened.

Ladies and gentlemen, introducing OpenBackup, the first tool of its kind that utilizes iCloud for seamless backups and restores…

[tube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1eSKoX_VdH4[/tube]

What makes OpenBackup so promising is how ridiculously easy it is to use. There’s no setup, no configuration; you just backup and restore. It’s as simple as 1-2-3.

What’s great about OpenBackup is that it totally relies on iCloud. It saves a list of all of your free Cydia apps and tweaks on iCloud, along with their preferences. On restore, it downloads every item on the list from Cydia, and replaces the preference files so that all of your settings are restored. It’s remarkable how simple it is.

And while it’s true that other backup solutions do the same, iCloud is the real difference maker here. Since your device is already connected to iCloud, there’s no logging in, no setting up credentials, or anything like that. It automatically knows your device, and can restore to the device with a simple press of the restore button.

Although I really like this app, it does have some room for improvement; improvement in two areas, actually.

Area one: The interface. Simply put, it looks like something I could design in Microsoft Paint. It’s definitely not Apple-esque, and it looks almost questionably rudimentary. It might make you think, “Should I even store my stuff with this thing?”

Area two: Lack of options. It’s okay to be simple, but this is over-the-top simple. In fact, there’s no easy way to display what’s being backed up and restored.

One last gripe is that it can’t backup your paid apps and tweaks. I understand that this is due to the need for credentials, but it’s still a small gripe. As of now, it can only backup and restore free tweaks, but that’s just a minor gripe in the grand scheme of things.

Overall, OpenBackup is an excellent first release, and has plenty of promise for the future. Best of all, you can download it for free.

What do you think about OpenBackup? Don’t you think managing your tweaks with iCloud a major step in the right direction?